Ahuge box-office hit, a major influence on contemporary
culture and a new standard for action-science-fiction cinema, The Matrix
is all that. Combining powerful references to Kung-Fu movies, Japanese
animation, videogames, but also to philosophy and religion, it's a
striking piece of entertainment and a very strong film about the
perception of reality, the religious and personal faith that this
perception implies, and the social rebellion that cyberpunk culture
represents for young people nowadays. A film violently in favor of
freedom, dream and self-confidence.

Nonetheless, there's a strange point of view on violence and killing in
this movie : since their story takes place in a virtual world, the
Wachowski let their characters mercilessly kill everyone who stand in
their way. In this context, it's right, even cool to kill the ones who
have the power ; a point of view that can be misunderstood and taken
literally by some people. Columbine, anyone?

Anyway, let's be smart and take this film seriously but not literally. The
Matrix is a major piece of filmmaking, an instant cult film, and probably
a masterpiece... if there hadn't been any sequel to it. To be continued...

ADDITION: Warner
Blu-ray: We hope to cover the entire Ultimate Matrix
Collection on
Blu-ray (where this
disc is from) so we will only give a brief overview on this first
disc (of the 5) in this mammoth set. It can only be obtained in the
collection boxset as it is not, presently, sold individually in
1080P resolution.

NOTE: We will
assume like all other Warner
Blu-rays that this is also
Region FREE.

The feature takes up 27.7 Gig of the dual-layered disc. We'll assume
this equals
The Complete Matrix HD Trilogy
that came out in May 2007 as the limit of that format was 30 Gig per
dual-layered disc - so this is most probably the same encode. It looks
very good but the film is almost 10 years old now (if you can believe).
The image improves in all the expected areas - tighter detail, truer
colors, much better skin tones and it is marginally brighter. The
green color scheme of the 'Ultimate' SD-DVD is supported. It looks
quite strong and vastly superior to the SD-DVDs but perhaps a notch
below
modern film to 1080P standard. I'm positive its a function of how the film
was shot, rather than any weakness of the transfer, - still though the special effects look exceptionally
impressive. The image
has substantial depth at times and I doubt it could look any better
for digital home theater usage. It is a significant improvement.

Audio gets a bump to TrueHD and it's a
mind-blowing mix. The film is so adeptly suited to a demonstrative,
aggressive track and this one pulls no punches. Very impressive.
Fans will surely appreciate the superiority over the old, but still
excellent, 5.1 that
even my crusty ears could differentiate. Some will consider it
reference quality. Absolutely thumbs up despite no PCM option!

It seems as though ALL the extras on both
previous SD editions are present here on this
Blu-ray. FOUR commentaries, a,
over 2 hour, featurette and aside from the SD supplements, there is
also an In-Movie experience and a digital copy 2nd disc. If you
count the 4 commentaries as full length supplements there is over 15
hours of bonus material on this
Blu-ray alone. Unbelievable!

Certainly this is looking like the most
complete package ever assembled on
Blu-ray. Its exhaustive extras,
superior image and boisterous audio should make fans of the
Wachowski's films truly ecstatic. The Matrix was one film that can
truly benefit from the highest resolution possible and Warner have
created a monster with this. More later in the full review...

***

ON THE SD-DVDs: The differences between the 1999 and the
2004 versions are pretty obvious : sharpness and contrasts are much
better on the 2004 DVD, probably thanks to a high definition transfer.
The framing is also a little different, with the 2004 version
sometimes offering a bit more image on top, bottom or corners of the
frames. This improves the framing compositions quite a lot (see
comparisons 1 and 4 in particular).

The other main difference are the colours : whereas the 1999 version
offers green-brown tones in the Matrix and soft blue tones in the real
world, the 2004 version delivers very crude green-white tones in the
Matrix and stronger blue-white tones in the real world. That makes the
original film look more like Reloaded and Revolutions than with the
previous DVD. Of course, these changes are greatly emphasized by the
higher contrast of the 2004 version. It’s difficult to call this one
an improvement, since the colour style of the 1999 version wasn’t so
bad (hell, this DVD was a reference for almost five years!) and the
Matrix sequels have such a lousy reputation that making the original
look like the sequels could be considered an insult. Anyway, that’s
the way the Wachowski always intended The Matrix to look like on
video, so whether it's a matter of taste or not, this should be
considered as the true visual version of The Matrix.

As for the extras, all the 1999 release extras are one way or another
included in the Ultimate Matrix Collection (UMC). All but the
commentaries, but these are so pathetic it’s almost a good thing they
were replaced by new commentaries, even though these ones are still
not really satisfying. The addition of a French dub (which is
definitely from France, not Quebec, contrary to what's specified on
the boxset) and French subtitles on the UMC release is greatly
appreciated!